Three-Day Town (10 page)

“You like Gilbert and Sullivan?” Elliott asked.

I nodded. Dwight made a
comme ci, comme ça
gesture with his hand.

“That’s how Sigrid and I got to know each other,” Elliott said. “She was investigating a death at the Breul House—and if you’re interested in some of the worst excesses in nineteenth-century art collecting, you owe yourself a visit. Bad taste preserved in amber, although the house itself has good lines, architecturally speaking. Anyhow, she heard me whistling one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter songs and I was hooked as soon as I realized she knew all the words.”

“Really?” I took the last dab of scrambled eggs from the bowl. “She doesn’t strike me as a person who would like anything so frivolous.”

“I thought that, too, at first.” He cut a raspberry Danish in half and slid it onto his plate. “On the other hand, Gilbert and Sullivan may be frivolous, but they aren’t stupid.” He licked raspberry jam from his finger. “Remind me to give her that magazine article we found.”

“Right. I stuck it back in the box.”

When I went out to the kitchen to start a second pot of coffee, I took out the pages and started to flatten the box so it would fit into the recycle bin easier. Upon disposing of the bubble wrap at the bottom, though, I discovered a small white envelope underneath, an envelope addressed to Anne Harald.

Sealed, unfortunately.

(“
Not that you would read someone else’s letter if it were unsealed
,” my internal preacher said starchily. His pragmatic roommate gave a cynical snort. He has no illusions about my strength of character when my curiosity’s in full gallop.)

Elliott regarded the envelope with equal curiosity when I brought it and the magazine pages back to the dining room.

“Let’s hope Sigrid won’t wait till Anne gets back from New Zealand next month,” he said.

I topped off his coffee cup and paused to look out the dining room window. Blown by the wind, snowflakes swirled down and around like confetti at a political convention.

“People were out on skis before,” Dwight said. “Why don’t we buy you some boots and maybe walk over to the park?”

“Will a shoe store be open on Sunday?”

“Some guy was selling cheap plastic boots on the sidewalk in front of the market. Right next to a woman selling mittens and scarves. How do you suppose they do it? How did he put his hands on a bunch of boots in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Elliott nodded in amused agreement. “Street vendors are a breed unto themselves. Two drops into a downpour and you’ll see them hawking umbrellas on every corner. They—”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

I looked at Dwight. “I thought people had to be buzzed in first.”

“They’re cops,” he reminded me.

Of course.

But when I answered the door, it wasn’t Sigrid and her team. Luna DiSimone stood there looking perfectly adorable in a coral gym suit and a silk hibiscus behind her ear. She held a platter full of assorted canapés and hors d’oeuvres covered by a sheet of plastic wrap. Over her shoulder I saw that she’d left the door to her apartment standing wide open at the other end of the hall.

“I was hoping you could take some of this food off my hands,” she said. “The party broke up so early, I’ve got tons of the stuff left. Oh, hi, Elliott. Do you know these people?” She laughed at her own question. “Well, of course you do or you wouldn’t be here, would you? Have you seen the snow? Isn’t it just
gorgeous
? Nicco keeps calling me to bitch about it, but I love snow, don’t you?”

Without being invited in, yet never questioning her welcome, she walked past me and put the platter on the table. Dwight and Elliott had come to their feet, Elliott unfolding himself one storklike joint at a time as he leaned over to accept her kiss on the cheek.

“Don’t let me interrupt your breakfast,” she said with that gurgling lilt that made her commercials so easy on the ears.

“Please,” I said, gesturing to one of the empty chairs. “We’re pretty much finished. Can I get you a cup of coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

She circled the table to sit next to Elliott and smiled happily. “Coffee would be absolutely wonderful. Black, please, and no sugar.”

I brought it to her and said, “I think you left the door of your apartment open.”

She dismissed my warning with an airy wave. “That’s okay. Everybody’s honest on this floor.”

Elliott cocked his head at her. “Luna, you do realize that someone was killed here last night?”

A shadow crossed her smooth face. “Poor Phil! It’s so
awful
. I still can’t believe it. He was so sweet when he brought up the coat racks for me last night. I absolutely had to
force
him to take a tip. Who on earth do you think could have done that? It must have been someone who pretended he was invited to my party. Sidney’s going to be so mad at himself when he realizes what he’s done.”

“The elevator man? What’d he do?” Dwight asked.

“He brought the killer up, didn’t he? Without asking if he was one of the people I’d invited.”

Elliott frowned. “He wasn’t checking IDs when I came up, and I didn’t see a list.”

“I didn’t give him one, but—”

“But he should have recognized the mark of Cain on the killer’s forehead and refused to let him get on the elevator?”

“Okay, I guess that was silly,” Luna admitted with another graceful wave of her hand. “But none of my friends are killers. Honest. I won’t say they wouldn’t stab you in the back if they thought it would get them a part in a TV series, but really kill?
Never!
”

“Any of your guests have sticky fingers?” Dwight asked casually.

Luna half turned in her chair and her eyes widened as if she were seeing him for the first time and rather liked what she saw. Her eyes moved deliberately down his muscular body and she reminded me of a golden retriever when it suddenly spots an unguarded bone.

“Sticky fingers, Dwight? It
is
Dwight, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Several of your guests were in here last night.”

“And something’s missing? What?” Her eyes swept the dining room and vestibule in undisguised interest. “I just realized that this is the first time I’ve been in Jordy’s apartment. How do you two know him anyhow? I don’t think he’s ever been further south in America than the Village, so you must have met him here. And this place is so
him
, isn’t it? Traditional landscapes, old pieces of wood furniture. Oh, look! Are those strips of stained glass original to these windowpanes?”

She didn’t seem to expect any answers to her cascade of questions, and when she stood up and walked toward the living room, there was no way to stop her short of putting my foot out to trip her.

“Where did it happen? In here? Ewww! Is that Phil’s blood on the floor? How could you stand to stay here last night, Deborah? Doesn’t this gross you out? It would me. I’ll give you my cleaning guy’s number. You certainly can’t ask Denise to come and clean up her own husband’s blood, now can you?”

I suppose I should have taken offense, but her chatter and her questions were those of an artless child. Dwight, Elliott, and I exchanged raised eyebrows and the three of us trailed her into the living room in time to hear her shriek, “My cat! Oh my God! That’s my Oaxacan cat! How did it get here?”

She snatched up that brightly painted handcarved wooden cat from the side table. Graphite smudged her fingers, but she didn’t seem to notice. Cradling it protectively in her hands, she looked at Dwight and me in bewilderment. “Did you take it?”

“Certainly not,” I said indignantly. “Last night was the first time I noticed it.” I appealed to Dwight. “Did you?”

He shook his head. “When did you last see it, Miss DiSimone?”

“Oh no!” she wailed, her long blonde tresses swirling around her face. “Please, Dwight. Don’t go formal on me. I’m sorry. Of course you and Deborah didn’t steal it. I know you didn’t. I’m so confused by all this—Phil getting killed, my party messed up, police taking down our names like we’re criminals—I’m not thinking straight.” She set the cat on the nearest surface and clutched the sleeve of Elliott’s Yamaha sweatshirt with both hands, leaving traces of fingerprint powder. “Elliott, tell them I didn’t mean it like that!”

Shaking his head at her dramatic apologies, he said, “What can I tell you? She’s an actress. She needs a scriptwriter to keep her on track.”

He looked at his watch and frowned. “I wonder what’s holding Sigrid up? Luna, dear, stop posturing and tell me that my overcoat and scarf wound up in your apartment last night.”

“Was that your coat? I knew it belonged to somebody really tall and skinny. It was still on the rack last night when Nicco had to leave. He could barely get it buttoned and it was practically dragging the floor on him. He had to go to his studio to walk his dogs and then it was snowing too hard to get back, but I’m sure he’ll bring it with him when he comes. What time is it? He swore he’d be here by eleven so we could have brunch with the
Tiempo
people, although they may cancel because of the snow. He’ll be so pissed if they do because he was hoping they’d run an in-depth interview about his new paintings and—”

Elliott held up a hand to stop her chatter and herded her toward the front door. “It’s well past eleven and he’s probably sitting on your swing at this very minute, wondering where you are.”

“Oh. Right.”

I followed them to the door and reminded Elliott that he’d left his jacket on a chair in the dining room.

“I’ll be right back if Marclay has my coat,” he said.

I left the door on the latch and fetched a wet cloth from the kitchen to begin wiping surfaces that had been dusted for fingerprints, including the cat that Luna had forgotten to take. Dwight came down the hall from the second bathroom with a bath mat in his hand. “I’m going to put this over that bloodstain till we can get it cleaned,” he said.

The chenille mat had interlocking circles of blue and green and didn’t exactly go with anything in the room, but yes, I was glad to have the blood covered.

CHAPTER

9

The citizen of Gotham and his wife dodge the servant question at the start by taking an apartment instead of a whole house…. A maid looks after the sweeping and cleaning, messenger boys and the telephone do the errands, and the janitor fights off agents, gas men, and beggars. One does not have to think about light or fuel or ice or ashes.

—
The New New York
, 1909

S
IGRID
H
ARALD
—S
UNDAY MORNING (CONTINUED)

O
nce the others had gotten past the obvious raunchy remarks and readjusted their theories in light of the ME’s report, Sigrid said, “Not a word of this to anyone unless it appears to be common knowledge. Until we learn more about the whole situation, Lundigren is a ‘he.’ Understood?”

Her words were meant for the whole team, but it was Urbanska who flushed bright red, aware that her impulsive tongue had spoken out of turn more than once.

“Understood, ma’am.”

The street in front of the apartment building had not been plowed when they arrived, but employees from the buildings along here seemed to be keeping the sidewalk shoveled and blown fairly clean as snow continued to fall. The pure white drifts turned New York’s gritty streets into a New Year’s greeting card, and even Sigrid, who seldom paid much attention to nature, found herself caught up in the beauty of bare tree limbs etched in white against the dark brick or stone of the buildings.

Hentz nosed the car in as close to the curb as possible. Last night’s rain meant that ice had formed beneath the snow, but they managed to get to the sidewalk without falling, although Sigrid and Elaine Albee both grasped the nearest arms when their booted feet almost slipped out from under them. The front door was locked, and Sigrid was surprised by the elevator man, who opened the door for them in his neat brown uniform.

“Weren’t you on duty last night?”

There were shadows under Sidney Jackson’s almond-shaped eyes and his face seemed pale and tired beneath its faint golden skin. “The day man walked off the job this morning so I got called back in. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Wall told me Phil got killed last night.”

The elevator was small, but the six of them managed to squeeze in.

“Vlad—he’s a porter and he got called in, too. He says Denise flipped out and they took her to Bellevue. She gonna be okay? How’d Phil die anyhow? Somebody cut him?”

“Why do you say that?” Hentz asked.

“I’m back and forth to the sixth floor all night and I didn’t hear anybody say anything about a gunshot. Jani took over for me around eleven so I could get home before the snow got too deep, and he told Vlad the same thing. So what did happen?”

Ignoring his question, Sigrid asked, “Did you see Lundigren last night around ten?”

“No, but he would’ve used the back elevator or the back stairs.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Good as anybody, I guess. Friendly enough, but he doesn’t hang out with us. He’s a hard worker an’ he keeps at it. Building this old, something’s always breaking down and the boiler needs watching like a baby—that’s why they called Vlad in. He knows boilers. But Phil, he’s right on top of things. He’ll get on you bad if he thinks you’re slacking off or not being a good representative for the building.” He gestured over his shoulder to the open elevator car. “He makes us keep the cage polished and we can’t let stuff pile up in the corners because Denise, she vacuums it out every day.”

The detectives noted that nothing in Sidney Jackson’s words gave any indication that he knew the victim’s true sex.

“Mrs. Lundigren is on the payroll?” asked Lowry.

He shrugged. “She helps Phil out with stuff like that. She’s okay as long as you don’t talk to her. She wants you to act like you don’t know she’s there. She cleans for Mr. Lacour and Mrs. Wall, and that reminds me: Mrs. Wall said for me tell her when you get here.”